Revolutionary Calendar

Louis Philibert Debucourt

1793 · Etching and aquatint · Drawings and Prints

Following the French Revolution, a Republican calendar was adopted and in use from 1793 to 1805. The religious and royalist references of the Gregorian calendar were purged and replaced with names drawn from nature. With a structure based on the decimal system, the new calendar began each year in the autumn. Debucourt presents the calendar with the months and days of Year II (1793–94) inscribed in a box. The allegorical figure of Philosophy sits atop a stone outcropping amid various symbols of learning and the newly founded French Republic. Based on his own design, it is a tour de force of the aquatint technique, employing a full range of painterly tones, from white and pale grays through the inkiest blacks.

Artist

Louis Philibert Debucourt

Date

1793

Medium

Etching and aquatint

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Funds from various donors, 2013